NAME
Business::Tax::VAT - perform European VAT calculations
SYNOPSIS
use Business::Tax::VAT;
my $vat = Business::Tax::VAT->new(qw/uk ie/);
my $price = $vat->item(120 => 'ie');
my $price_to_customer = $price->full; # 120
my $vat_charged = $price->vat; # 20
my $net_price_to_me = $price->net; # 100
my $price = $vat->business_item(100 => 'uk');
my $price_to_customer = $price->full; # 117.5
my $vat_charged = $price->vat; # 17.5
my $net_price_to_me = $price->net; # 100
DESCRIPTION
Charging VAT across the European Union is quite complex. The rate of tax
you have to charge depends on whether you're dealing with consumers or
corporations, what types of goods you're selling, whether you've crossed
thresholds in certain countries, etc.
This module aims to make some of this simpler.
There are several key processes:
CONSTRUCTING A VAT OBJECT
new
my $vat = Business::Tax::VAT->new(@country_codes);
First of all you have to construct a VAT object, providing it with a
list of countries for which you have to charge VAT. This may only be the
country in which you are trading, or it may be any of the 15 EC
territories in which VAT is collected.
The full list of territories, and their abbreviations, is documented
below.
PRICING AN ITEM
item / business_item
my $price = $vat->item($unit_price => $country_code);
my $price = $vat->business_item($unit_price => $country_code);
You create a Price object by calling either the 'item' or
'business_item' constructor, with the unit price, and the country to
which you are supplying the goods. This operates on the priciple that
prices to consumers are quoted with VAT included, but prices to business
are quoted ex-VAT.
If you do not supply a country code, it will default to the first
country in the country list passed to VAT->new;
CALCULATING THE COMPONENT PRICES
full / vat / net
my $price_to_customer = $price->full;
my $vat_charged = $price->vat;
my $net_price_to_me = $price->net;
Once we have our price, we can query it for either the 'full' price that
will be charged (including VAT), the 'net' price (excluding VAT), and
the 'vat' portion itself.
NON-VATABLE COUNTRIES
If you send goods to many countries, some of which are in your VAT
territory and others not, you can avoid surrounding this code in
conditionals by calling $vat->item on all items anyway, listing the
country to which you are supplying the goods.
If the country in question is not one of the territories in which you
should charge VAT then the 'full' and 'net' values will be the same, and
'vat' will be zero.
NON-VATABLE, ZERO-RATED, REDUCED-RATE GOODS
This module does not cope with goods which are not at the 'standard'
rate of VAT for a country (as detailed below).
Patches welcomed!
COUNTRIES AND RATES
This module uses the following rates and codes:
at, Austria, 20%
be, Belgium, 21%
cy, Cyprus, 15%
cz, Czech Republic, 19%
dk, Denmark, 25%
ee, Estonia, 18%
fi, Finland, 22%
fr, France, 19.6%
de, Germany, 16%
gr, Greece, 17.5%
hu, Hungary, 25%
ie, Ireland, 21%
it, Italy, 20%
lv, Latvia, 18%
lt, Lithuania, 17.5%
lu, Luxembourg, 15%
mt, Malta, 18%
nl, The Netherlands, 19%
pl, Poland, 22%
pt, Portugal, 21%
sk, Slovak Republic, 19%
si, Slovenia, 20%
es, Spain, 16%
se, Sweden, 25%
uk, United Kingdom, 17.5%
If any of these rates become incorrect, or if you wish to use different
rates due to the nature of the product (e.g. books are 0% VAT in the
UK), then you can (locally) set the rate by assigning to
%Business::Tax::VAT::Price::RATE. e.g.:
local $Business::Tax::VAT::Price::RATE{uk} = 0
if ($product_type eq 'book' and $country eq 'uk');
AUTHOR
Tony Bowden
BUGS and QUERIES
Please direct all correspondence regarding this module to:
bug-Business-Tax-VAT@rt.cpan.org
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2001-2005 Tony Bowden.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 2 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.